Farm, Food & Cider Find Diverse Channels

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At some point, Isaac Potash knew he was going to do something with the two acres he’d left vacant at his north Kelowna orchard. Maybe a fruit stand, maybe something else… but that space was left for the future while the orchard on the other 18 acres grew and flourished.

“I’m from Cawston,” he explains. “My dad started the organic packing house there. I moved to Kelowna and still wanted to farm.”

Potash planted a range of different fruit trees including 12 varieties of apples, of which seven are dessert varieties and five are cider varieties.

“We have just under 150 bins of pears, just under eight acres of cherries,” he says. “Also peaches, garlic, and prunes.”

With all that fruit, it was only natural to start a cider house. Potash, his life-partner Jaye Siegmueller and friends Rick and Tara Harrington started work on the cidery building in the fall of 2017 and Upside Cider opened on June 8, 2019. The project was an investment shared by the two couples as well as a few silent investors.

While one might think this is your standard cidery, it’s not, in that Potash and Siegmueller always knew there would be a market attached. Sunreal Organic Farm and Market names the orchard as well as the market retail space next door to the cidery.

The businesses are separate, but customers can walk between the two and around the retail/tasting spaces that make up part of the 6,000 square foot downstairs area. Upstairs is a patio that overlooks the orchard as well as space accommodating the necessary bathrooms, kitchen and offices.

The vision for the market is fresh and local and will include produce, meat, cheese, dairy and other food options.

“Local, organic food produced by us and other farmers in the area,” Siegmueller says.

Even Canadian Cheese Ambassador David Beaudoin is going to be part of the market, bringing in some of the best cheeses from across the country. He will break them down into smaller sections for retail sales as well as for sale to local wineries.

“We will have great cheese here,” she adds. “We have the best damn charcuterie in the whole valley. Every ingredient is specifically chosen.”

Back on the other side of the building, Upside Cider has five different flavours (and counting) and produced 8,000 liters in the first run with more cider still aging. The focus is on organic, wholesome fruit to make good cider that is currently sold on-site, in a few Kelowna restaurants and at some wineries.

“We can make such great cider because the apples are so good,” says Potash. “What we grow, it’s the best fruit in the world. Growing cider and making cider are two completely different things.”

Rick Harrington and Potash grew up in Cawston, learned how to grow great fruit and spent time with others who’d gone into the cider business before them, so they had support. More importantly, Potash understood growing and established his orchard long before the cider house came along.

“It was so fun and we’d be down there helping Twisted Hills Cider,” Harrington says. “We just had all these friends that we’d grown up with. It was easy to get into.”

The road from starting to opening was long but eventually things were close enough to ‘pull off the Band-aid’ and open the doors to the public.

“All of a sudden Isaac said, ‘we’ll open Friday’,” notes Harrington. “We got open and we did it. We hosted a BC Chefs Association dinner that day.”

The cider-making duties are a team effort shared between Harrington, Potash and Siegmueller. In time, thing will shift more to: Potash – Grow; Harrington – Make, and Siegmueller – Sell. Tara Harrington is a teacher in Alberta, so currently her involvement is minimal, although enthusiastic.

“I really kind of enjoy having families in,” Potash says. “We do a juice flight for kids. It’s a super fun place to be.”

Bringing the farm to others

The concept of fresh, healthy food is long ingrained in Siegmueller. After she helped get the Monashee Co-op started in Lumby in 2013 she began Farm Bound, an organic food delivery company. It was designed to connect people with organic food and the farmers who grow it.

“I wanted to make it easy for people that wanted to support local farmers,” she explains.

But sometimes a good idea goes gangbusters and not long after the business started in 2015, Siegmueller found she was delivering produce to 18 BC communities from a single warehouse in Vernon.

“People sign up online, pick the size of the box they want and the frequency and each week, we fill the box with the freshest, local, best produce,” she says.

Now, customers can also add bread, milk, meat and other elements to their delivery box. They can even swap things out they don’t want and replace them with other items.

Farm Bound doesn’t just benefit customers and the business, but also the farmers who supply the products.

With bigger crops, we have contracts for our basic items,” Siegmueller says. “One of our farmers does all of our greens. They know we need 100 heads of greens a week, they can plan for it. We’ve even had farmers who’ve expanded their business with confidence because they knew we were getting produce from them.”

Tied to Farm Bound is Farm Bound Zero Waste, a zero waste organic grocery.

“It’s all managed out of our same warehouse,” she says. “I just knew we could do better. It’s an invitation to consumers to consider how they do things.”

Some of the produce sold at Zero Waste comes from Farm Bound, it gives Siegmueller greater buying power, but it isn’t the produce that tops the sales.

“It’s vegan milks, cheese and body care items,” she explains. “It’s all small, local makers.” Top sellers include shampoo and conditioner bars and cleaning products.

“We’re so committed to ingredient integrity that some things are more expensive,” she says. “I’m committed to small local makers that have integrity with their products.”

Siegmueller’s intention is to shift consumer consciousness around consumption, to move people to use less product and packaging wherever they can.

Organic produce is at the heart of everything happening with Sunreal Organic Farm and Market as well as the other businesses run by this group of family and friends. It’s a fresh, organic approach to regular grocery shopping, specialty produce and the indulgence of hard cider.

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Orchard & Vine Year End 2023